Impossible
by Altiria-Aty
Summary: The first time is impossible and yet she does it anyway. The second time is as easy as breathing and it helps her to understand that her impossible choice was the only one she could have ever taken.


The first time it's difficult, impossible really.

The first time it's her against an entire world of people who tell her again and again it's a mistake. It's the knowledge of the deaths that weigh on upon her; of pain caused, and how brutally inhumane and viciously destructive he had been - could be. It's her adoptive family in her ears and her best friends telling her not to do it, and the fact that she could believe their words.

The first time it's impossible and yet she does it anyway. She does it because when she looks down at Tom underneath the bench of Kings Cross, all she could see was the cupboard under the stairs. As she looks into those gray eyes and instead sees green lifelessly looking back. As she peers at skin the texture of paper and can almost feel hands bruising on her own skin. She does it against all logic - it's crazy, utterly insane, the act of someone who has lost touch in reality. She does it even though her mentor speaks to her telling her not to touch something so broken, telling her that she can't help him. Yet the words she hears instead are the ones she told herself a hundred times before and to hear 'he cannot be helped' is to believe that she too was- is beyond saving.

It's so ridiculously impossible that no one would ever think, would ever imagine she'd do it. Yet against all the odds, against the dead wailing in her ears, against the living ordering her finish it she swoops down. Dumbledore cannot stop her; he's far too slow and no longer has the connection to life that she does and as impossible as she knows it is, she plucks Tom Riddle's soul from the ground. She tucks him close to her breast and turns her back on her mentor who stands so horrified and judging, disbelieving and distraught. She knows already he thinks she's been corrupted, possessed, broken in all the ways that count. In that moment with that expression on his face, she knows she made the correct choice.

But it cost her everything she knew then.

The first time was impossible. As she chooses to take care of the soul that destroyed her life, as she took him to the place Sirius had once been trapped in. To the building he considered a cage, and the one she could only ever connect to death, but the place she knows is safe, the place where she can breathe. It's impossible as she chooses an infant with no memory of the destruction he caused and who keeps her up all night screaming out of hunger, a change of diaper or for no reason at all. As she chooses an infant over everything she knew. Impossible she holds him close every night humming through his nightmares and pretends she was terrified the people she once called allies will break down her doors and take him- kill him. As she sobbed through the night feeling the stings of betrayal in her throat for those dearest her gave her up because 'they couldn't handle it.'

They didn't even try.

The first time it was impossible as she laid awake at night muffling her wails into her pillow so he wouldn't hear and know how much her choice cost her. Or when she showed him how to use magic and the stance he took was so familiar that she had nightmares for weeks. It was impossible as she heard noises in the dark and was torn between terror that someone was coming to hurt him, or if he'd finally remembered and was going to-

Some nights she isn't sure she'd stop him if he did.

It was impossible as she left the world she'd given her life to protect because they would never allow either of them peace. They'd hunt him down because they knew who he was and who he had once become when he'd been alone and never loved. As she whispered to herself every night that it was their choices who made them even who they were and that her decisions and actions would raise a very different man. Impossible since the person who told her that also told her to walk to her death for the greater good.

The first time was impossible.

But the second time? The second time was as easy as breathing.

The second time was so easy as she cradled a terrified little girl to her chest and remembered holding another who liked to curl his tiny fingers in her shirts. It's easy because even through the nights of terror and anguish she had mornings where a ball of joy chattered to her nonstop because of the amazing and yet so mundane thing he saw. That she recalled how unhealthy they'd both been at the start, but years later at a muggle doctors office where she and he were proclaimed perfectly health, her boy licked a gifted lollipop that he thanked the doctor for without any prompting from her. Or when he new friends babysat for her and she didn't fear that her son would be just fine because she learned again how to trust.

It's so easy the second time when she remembers the drawings littering her home and the goofy smile as Tom presented her with a rock he found while exploring and thought of her. Or the first time he speaks his first word nailing the solid 't' sound with pride. It's so easy because she recalled the first day of school that even though his brilliance he offered to help a child in desperate need of a friend like she once did. How she so easily puffed up with endless pride because she was right. He was so very worth it, even if the world itself told her different, she knew it.

The second time took no effort at all. As she knelt before a pair of terrified brown eyes and saw gray and green shining back at her. As she offered her hand and burnt digits reached out in the hopeful manner only a child could manage after such pain. It was with no hesitation she said yes.

Because for as impossible as it was the first time she became a mother, it was also the greatest thing she'd ever done and she would never ever regret it.


End file.
